Who You Gonna Believe? Playboy

… Mexico or Your Own Lying Eyes? Mag Says Cover Has Nothing to Do With Virgin Mary

Last week we linked to this post by Laura Martinez showing you a Mexican Playboy cover with a model all dudded up as the Virgin Mary — if by dudded up you mean, wearing a habit and nothing else. I didn’t post the cover because I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But now, CNN is quoting the magazine as saying “The image is not and never was intended to portray the Virgin of Guadalupe or any other religious figure. … The intent was to portray a renaissance-like mood on the cover.” Riiiiggghht. Well, there’s the image over on the left. Maybe he’s right. The naked woman wearing a habit standing in front of stained glass and behind the phrase “Te Adoramos, Maria”–that can’t possibly be Mary or any other religious figure. Maybe for Ramadan, the Indonesian version of Playgirl can try something similar with the prophet Mohammad.

Stories of the Year

Plus This Year’s Follies

Detroit’s meltdown and the continuing recession have been dominating the news recently, but there were other major news stories this year, including the election of Barack Obama as president and the sale of all-American Anheuser-Busch to foreign-owned InBev.

1. BARACK OBAMA

In 2008, an African-American with Hussein as a middle name was elected president of the U.S. To think, some said he’d never make it past Hillary Clinton. And Obama didn’t just do it with inspiring speeches. He and his team did it with some pretty inspiring marketing as well. From fundraising to social networking to old-fashioned branding, Barack Hussein Obama will provide a case study for politicians and marketers alike.

2. RECESSION

Turns out the recession was already peeking over our shoulders last time the Book of Tens hit newsstands. Neither marketers nor consumers needed an official label to realize 2008 wasn’t going swimmingly. The only things that seemed to climb this year were unemployment numbers and gas prices (and even those have fallen). Sales slumped across all categories, budgets were slashed and … well, some of the bad news was so bad it merits its own entry.

3. FINANCIAL SECTOR IMPLODES

“The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” John McCain said Sept. 15. By October, he was calling this “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” What happened? The government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the rescue of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America; the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers; the bailout of mega-insurer AIG; and the biggest U.S. bank failure in history, WaMu (absorbed by Chase). Congress even authorized a $700 billion bailout pool. Crisis over? Not yet.

4. DETROIT HITS BOTTOM

We knew things weren’t going great for the Big Three, but did anyone think it would get quite this bad? Sure, Ford showed a glimmer of first-quarter hope, but high gas prices socked it to Detroit’s profit center: gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks. Add to that GM’s brand bloat, Chrysler’s management woes, a recession and a credit crush, and it’s no surprise these guys went hat in hand to Washington. The Big Three might become the Not So Big Two. Whatever happens, it’s horrible news for agencies and media alike.

5. THE MICROHOO SAGA

Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo started a month into 2008, when the Redmond-based giant launched a bid for its neighbor down the coast. As negotiations went from terse to worse, Google swooped in with a doomed search plan meant to save Yahoo; Time Warner started talks with both in an attempt to unload AOL; and regulators decided maybe they should be watching this online space more closely. Now the pair are set to close out the deal just as they started it: alone and still chasing Google.

6. ANHEUSER-BUSCH SOLD TO INBEV

Ending the independence of one of the most iconic and successful American marketing machines ever built, Belgian-Brazilian company InBev acquired Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion. Armchair critics bashed America’s most famous brewers for selling out to foreigners. Renowned for his zero-based budgeting, InBev CEO Carlos Brito promised the company “understands Bud” and wouldn’t gut marketing. Oh, and in other beer news, Miller and Coors formed a joint venture to take on A-B.

7. THE DEATH OF PAUL TILLEY

The apparent suicide of Paul Tilley, DDB Chicago’s managing director of creative, was a tragedy. What happened afterward was a disgrace, as attempts to blame bloggers for his death triggered what Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom called “one of the ugliest, most narcissistic displays I’ve seen from the ad industry” — which is saying a lot. He continued: “Executives, reporters and commentators parceled out blame and crazy conjecture as if it were fact and took the opportunity to talk about their own ad blogs.”

8. THE OLYMPICS

China is a big country with a lot of people. It’s also a big mystery to many — including marketers. If it seemed the entire world was watching as Beijing opened the 2008 Olympic Games, that’s because it was. China certainly didn’t disappoint when it came to spectacle. The opening ceremony was so spectacular that spectators forgave the fakery, the injury, the human-rights record. It’s not clear, though, that international marketers made any inroads with the coveted Chinese population.

9. MEDIA COMPANIES FIGURE OUT ONLINE VIDEO

Two years after YouTube had everyone panicking and throwing around expensive lawsuits, online video has become a profitable asset for NBC, News Corp. and Viacom, all of which have stakes in Hulu. They scored by streaming full-length clips and episodes of “Saturday Night Live,” “Family Guy,” “The Daily Show” and “Colbert,” occasionally at the risk of jeopardizing long-standing cable-operator relationships.

10. STARBUCKS STUMBLES

Starbucks’ year hasn’t been so much a rollercoaster as a downward spiral. Brand dilution, overexpansion and a horrific economy created a perfect storm for the once-unstoppable java giant. Starbucks has closed hundreds of stores, slashed executive positions and dialed back store openings. Same-store sales have continued to decline in the face of nationwide sampling, stepped-up marketing and advertising, discounts, and even occasional TV advertising. Next year apparently doesn’t look much better.

List of Top iPhone Apps Suggests

… Opportunities for Marketers

Games and Entertainment Apps Are iPhone’s Top Sellers

Applications — particularly iPhone applications — are gaining traction among advertisers because the rich user experience delivers deep engagement, the new metric in the brave new world of mobile.

Moreover, the iPhone is poised to give advertisers a bigger field now. A recent ComScore study shows the handset has broken demographic barriers: While 43% of iPhone owners earned more than $100,000 annually, a lot of growth is coming from those earning less than the median household income. IPhone adoption since June 2008 grew 48% among those earning between $25,000 and $50,000 per year and by 46% among those earning between $25,000 and $75,000.

IPhone apps can be free and ad-supported or paid or fee-based. Here are the top apps in both categories, along with their developers, category and cost.

Top 10 Paid Apps

1. Koi Pond, The Blimp Pilots, entertainment, 99 cents
2. Moto Chaser, Freeverse, games, 99 cents
3. Super Monkey Ball, Sega, games, $7.99
4. Enigmo, Pangea Software, games, $1.99
5. Recorder, Retronyms, business, 99 cents
6. Texas Hold’em, Apple, games, $4.99
7. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, Vivendi, games, $5.99
8. Cro-Mag Rally, Pangea Software, games, $1.99
9. PocketGuitar, Shinya Kasatani, music, 99 cents
10. iBeer, Hottrix, entertainment, 99 cents

Top 10 Free Apps

1. Pandora Radio, Pandora Media, music
2. Tap Tap Revenge, Tapulous, games
3. Labyrinth Lite Edition, Codify AB, games
4. Google Earth, Google, travel
5. AIM, AOL, social networking
6. Facebook, Facebook, social networking
7. Shazam, Shazam Entertainment, music
8. Remote, Apple, entertainment
9. Lightsaber Unleashed, TheMacBox, entertainment
10. Urbanspoon, Urbanspoon, travel

What the Semantic Web – or Web 3.0

…- Can Do for Marketers

It’s been nearly 10 years since Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the worldwide web, expressed his vision of a “semantic web,” in which all web data — and the meaning of that data — could be read by machines. Since then, much of the slow-moving progress toward this smarter and more powerful web has been courtesy of academics and data librarians.

Recently, however, the semantic web has been enjoying a commercial revival of sorts and is often referred to by the new buzzword “Web 3.0.” Given how insane the pace of life is these days, I thought I’d offer a few thoughts on what I’ve been learning about it.

Since I can already feel the rising tide of negative comments as that version number graces the screen, bear with me for a second. Semantic web is just one of a few things often referred to as Web 3.0 — others include topics like data portability or mobile web. But I think entrepreneur Nova Spivack offered the most useful definition by simply calling it the third decade of the web (2010 to 2020) and referring to the technology trends that will hit maturity during that time. Most importantly, the next generation of the web will bring us out of information overload and be more relevant and meaningful.

But Web 3.0 is not just about improving the consumer experience. And it isn’t some industry ploy to sell you more services. The next-generation web — the semantic web — aims to solve some of today’s biggest problems in marketing.

So what is it? Well, semantics refers to the meaning behind data. Right now, computers are good at sending data back and forth but not great at discerning the meaning of that data. Semantic web aims to change that. Perhaps it’s best explained in describing what marketers can hope to gain from it.

FULL ARTICLE

Marketers to Up Spending in Cable, Online

.. Mobile in Next 6 Months

Over the next six months, not only will ad spending be down, but the feeling among advertisers and their agencies toward media such as broadcast TV, national newspapers and magazines is growing more pessimistic. The dreary outlook is courtesy of the new Advertiser Optimism Report by Advertiser Perceptions.

The latest Advertiser Optimism Report by Advertiser Perceptions. Click to enlarge.

But while the outlook is somewhat bleak for the aforementioned ad media, others like online, cable TV and mobile are likely to attract more of marketers’ money.

The report shows a large percentage of the advertisers polled (68%) said they plan to increase their ad spending online. Still, that number is down four points from 72% six months ago. The numbers were also slightly down for cable TV (27% vs. 28%) and mobile (51% vs. 53%) over that same period but remained on the “optimistic” side of the scale.

Advertisers were more pessimistic on broadcast TV, with only 16% saying they would increase their ad spending on broadcast. That is down from the 22% who said they planned to increase their broadcast TV budget a year ago, and only slightly better than the 14% who were planning to increase their broadcast spending six months ago. National newspapers, which were already low six months ago at 10%, dropped into the single digits at 9%, while magazines saw a more drastic drop from 22% to 18% over the same time period. > FULL ARTICLE